


Just a Little Bedtime Story

by Wednesday990



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: And some of the other 104 are mentioned too, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wednesday990/pseuds/Wednesday990
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day Jean asks Mikasa about the day she met Eren. Yes, THAT day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Little Bedtime Story

Mikasa, Eren and Armin usually sat at the end of the dining table that was closest to the door. By the beginning of the second year, it was an acknowledged fact that it was "their" table and most of their fellow cadets left them alone. Everyone except for the perpetually stupid. Namely, either Jean, Sasha or Connie. 

Sasha and Connie usually only came to claim unwanted food or to gossip. Jean, however, usually came with two objectives in mind. Most often it was to goad Eren, but sometimes he came over to talk to the black-haired girl who was an especially exotic beauty. Jean's purpose this night was the completely the second since Eren had been assigned to run extra laps for accidentally mouthing off to Head Instructor Shadis. No one in the 104 had seen good ol' Keith that shocked since Sasha had offered him a piece of baked potato.

"So, uh," Jean began, ignoring his watery onion-potato soup and stale bread in order to talk to the stoic girl next to him. Armin, who was sitting across from the two of them, went mostly ignored. "What's up with Eren, huh? I know he doesn't have a lot of self-preservation, but back talking Keith Shadis?"

Armin and Mikasa stared blankly at Jean for so long, he started to sweat. Just when he was about to change the topic of conversation to something else, Mikasa answered him.

"He's always been reckless," Mikasa said, looking back down at her food. She picked up the end of her scarf and moved it up over her nose, looking thoughtful.

"Yeah," Armin said, looking off to the side as he reminisced. "The first time I met him, he tried to tackle the kids who were bullying me. I mean, we were... four, I think? They had to be at least twice our age."

"I remember when you told me that," Mikasa said. "How nostalgic..."

Armin smiled at her. Jean looked back and forth between the two and scowled a little bit. This wasn't how he'd wanted the conversation to go exactly.

"So, what about you?" Jean asked, looking at Mikasa. "How did you and Eren meet? I mean, I know you guys are adopted siblings so..."

Jean was realizing quickly that "adopted" meant that Mikasa's parents were dead and that she might not want to share.

"Uhhh.. I mean, if you want to," Jean said, blushing and rubbing the back of his neck. "If you don't then that's-"

"It's alright," Mikasa said. It didn't seem to bother her at all, her face as blank as it ever was around anyone who wasn't Eren (or sometimes Armin). "I'm not sure if we ever told Armin."

Armin shook his head, looking at his friend curiously. 

"No, I don't think so. I just remember Eren leaving for a trip with his dad and when he came back, he introduced you to me as his sister." 

Armin purposefully didn't mention that Eren had also tackled a bully that time, but Mikasa had thoroughly thrashed the three other kids. All of which had a good head of height on them and a lot more bulk. 

Mikasa hummed in agreement, probably thinking back to the same day. 

"We were nine," Mikasa began, not noticing how almost all of the people sitting around them were listening in. "I lived with my mom and dad in a cabin within Wall Maria, north of Shiganshina. Eren's dad was a well-known doctor who I'd met before when I was younger."

"Dr. Jeager probably treated you for plague," Armin interrupted. 

"Plague?" Jean asked, and he turned his head a little when a few people around them echoed his question. 

"Well, yeah," Armin said, suddenly noticing all of the people around them as well. "Plagues used to be a big problem in Shinganshina before Dr. Jeager came. My grandfather used to tell me about it. He came from the inner walls, before Eren was born probably, and by the time we were kids, the plagues were a thing of the past."

"That was probably it then," Mikasa agreed. "Dr. Jaeger was coming to check up on us. Otherwise it was just a regular day. I was sitting at the table with mom when someone knocked on the door. My dad answered it, but... it wasn't Dr. Jeager."

No one said anything as they stared at the black-haired girl looking pensively at the wooden table. They all knew that this wouldn't end well.

"All I saw was my father drop to his knees. I don't think I understood what had happened. There were three men standing in the doorway, and they said something to my mother. She had gotten up and grabbed a knife that was sitting on the table and tried to charge the one who had killed my father, but he was still holding the axe."

Jean and the rest could only stare with pale faces as they realized what Mikasa was telling them. Mikasa paused for a moment, as she brought the scarf back up to cover her nose and she took a deep calming breath.

"W-what happened then?" Sasha asked. Jean only just realized that she was sitting on the other side of Mikasa and was staring right at her. Connie was sitting next to Armin with his mouth gaping open, and Reiner and Bertholdt were sitting at the end of the table looking just as shocked as Jean felt. 

"My mother fell when he struck her with the axe," Mikasa continued. "I... couldn't move. They said something to me. I don't remember what it was, but they picked me up and took me to a hideout somewhere in the mountains. What happened in between I only learned from Eren much later. He and Dr. Jaeger had made it to our house right after. When Dr. Jaeger saw the bodies he told Eren to wait while he contacted the Military Police."

"Wait," Connie interrupted. "He told him to wait by your cabin? The one where...your parents were?" 

Mikasa shrugged. "I'm not sure exactly. He might have dropped him off somewhere else. But Eren didn't stay."

"Oh course he didn't," Jean muttered. "What did he do?"

"He came after me," Mikasa said, her tone warm for the first time. "He said he'd remembered an old house he and his dad had passed by on the way to my home, and instead of waiting, he backtracked through the woods to find it. The house had been abandoned for so long that it was easy enough to find where the three were hiding with me."

"So he went after three armed adults by himself?" Jean asked incredulously. "When he was nine?"

Jean knew that Eren was a suicidal bastard, but this really took the cake. He thought he'd only turned suicidal after the titans attacked Wall Maria, but clearly he'd always been insane. He should have known. 

"Eren knew that by the time Dr. Jaeger could bring the Military Police to find me, they could have already escaped," Mikasa said. This made many of them pause. 

"I was zoning in and out for a while," Mikasa admitted. "I just remember that one of them was reprimanded for killing my mother. Apparently she would have been more valuable. My mother was the only one left of her clan, of her kind, and I was less valuable because my father wasn't like her.

"He said that there would still be potential buyers, perhaps even because I was so young," Mikasa trailed off, and the trainees around her realized there was a new type of horror being introduced to this dark tale. Jean in particular lost whatever color that had been left in his face. Armin as well. However, Jean felt a sharp pang of guilt as he remembered it had been Mikasa's exotic looks that had attracted him to her in the first place. 

"What happened then?" Armin prompted, his face a little stonier than usual.

"Eren arrived," Mikasa said, and everyone could feel something both loosen and tighten in their chests a little, no matter how they felt about Eren. After all, someone was there to save the younger Mikasa, but how could a younger Eren take on three full grown men?

"The door opened and Eren was there, pretending to be a boy lost in the woods," Mikasa continued and several of the trainees swallowed in fear for the younger version of their comrade. "The man hesitated. The second man told him to shoo Eren away. I remember the first man crouched down and started patting Eren on the head, telling him not to worry and then he fell down."

"What do you mean he... fell?" Reiner asked from the other side of Sasha. Marco was leaning over him, his eyes unnaturally wide. Ymir and Krista had also pulled a bench up to the short side of the table by Reiner and Bertholdt, and Annie was perched at the end of it pretending not to listen in.

"He'd stabbed him," Mikasa confirmed. "After that Eren closed the door. He told me later that he'd managed to find two knives in one of the other rooms before he found us. One he used on the first man, and the other he'd tied to the end of a mop. So, when the second man ran over to open the door, he was ready."

"So, the second man?" Reiner prompted.

"Eren got him with the make-shift spear when he opened the door."

"Ah."

"He stabbed him for a while, yelling. After that he ran over to untie me. He told me who he was and who his father was, and that he'd been looking for me. It felt like I was finally being shaken from my shock, but then I remembered..."

"The third man." Armin finished for her.

"The third man," Mikasa confirmed. Now not even Annie or Ymir could hide their blatant interest in what was going to happen, and Krista was nearly falling out of her seat.

"As soon as I'd told Eren about him was when he'd appeared in the doorway. Eren tried to lunge for one of the knives, but the man kicked him before he could reach it. He started yelling at Eren about his companions and picked Eren up by the neck, but Eren was only looking at me. I remember what he told me to this day. He told me to fight. That I had to fight. If we lost, we would die. But if we won, we'd survive. If I couldn't fight, I couldn't win.

"I grabbed the knife, trembling, thinking that I couldn't do it at first, but then I remembered.... I had seen situations like this before. It had always been right in front of me. But I pretended not to see it. Insects killing other insects, animals killing other animals, even from my father who hunted for our food. 

"I realized that this world we lived in was cruel. That the strong preyed upon the weak. And when I realized that, I stopped trembling. I've had perfect control over myself ever since. I realized that I could do anything. And in that moment, I had to fight.

"I ran for the man that was choking Eren and stabbed him in the back, right through the heart."

Mikasa looked up for the first time and noticed there were a lot more people surrounding their table than there had been in the beginning. All of them were silent. Either looking at her with wide-eyes or looking down at their feet. 

"After that, it didn't take a long time for Dr. Jeager and the police to find us. Dr. Jaeger was happy to see that Eren and I were okay, but he was also a little angry. I remember he scolded Eren and asked him if he understood what he did, but Eren said that he put down a group of rabid dogs that just happened to be wearing human clothing. He said if he hadn't acted, they would have gotten away. Dr. Jaeger said that we were just lucky and that he was angry because Eren didn't consider his own safety. 

"Looking back I can see what Dr. Jaeger meant. He still doesn't take into account his own safety. But I can't say that I minded that one time. After that Dr. Jaeger said he would take me in. And Eren gave me this scarf and said we'd go home. Together."

Mikasa ran her fingers over the edge of her old scarf and hid a smile.  
The hall was still silent.

....

"Pwah!" 

Everyone jumped and looked to the door when a sweaty, gasping Eren appeared at the door. 

"Hey," Eren said, wiping sweat off his brow as he took in the curious sight before him. Everyone was crowded around his usual table.

"What's up?" Eren asked as he walked over to his seat. 

"I saved you some dinner," Mikasa said, gesturing toward her half-eaten soup and an extra loaf of bread she'd managed to swipe.

"Oh, thanks," Eren said. "Move over, horse-face."

Jean flinched hard enough that he fell off the edge of the bench. Eren just raised an eye-brow.

"Okaaay."

Eren immediately started to dig in to his pitifully small dinner, but he figured he wouldn't complain since Mikasa had gone through the trouble to make sure he even had a dinner. However, after a moment or two, he realized he had an audience. He looked up to see that nearly everyone in the dining hall was staring at him, even Jean who was still sitting on the floor next to him.

Eren swallowed the chunk of bread in his mouth before scowling and asking, "What?"

"Eren," Armin began, a hand over his forehead like he was experiencing a particularly painful headache. "Did you really... hunt down and kill two full-grown men when you were nine years old?"

Eren stared for a moment before scoffing and scooping up some of his soup. "No. I've never killed any men. I've only put down a pair of rabid dogs."

Everyone could feel a trickle of cold fear run down their spines at those words.

"R-right," Armin said.

"Armin and Jean wanted to hear about the day we met," Mikasa explained.

Eren glanced at her and looked thoughtfully off to the side. 

"That seems so long ago..." Eren mused. 

"Are you fucking crazy!" Jean yelled suddenly.

"What's your problem?" Eren yelled back.

"You killed two people! With knives! Are you psychotic as well as suicidal?" Jean screamed as he got back up off his feet and into Eren's face.

"What the fuck? What would you have done? They'd already killed Mikasa's parents! Was I supposed to let them sell her off to the highest-bidding pervert! You realize what they were, right, Jean? Human traffickers? Because if you think people like that are human than you must think that the Titans are too."

Jean's face turned a splotchy purple as he sputtered. 

"That-That's not the point! You could have waited! Or whatever! What you did wasn't normal! You fucking suicidal bastard!"

"I don't care!" Eren yelled back. "I don't regret it. And if any of you want to say something, say it now. Tell me that killing those bastards was wrong."

Everyone flinched back as Eren's murderous green glare was turned on them, and no one was brave enough to say anything.

"That's what I thought."

Eren picked up the rest of his bread and stomped out of the dining hall. 

....

The hall was completely silent yet again, and everyone watched as Mikasa slid from the bench and out the door without saying a word.

"Goddamn it," Jean said as he sat back down in Eren's spot, a hand covering his eyes. 

The problem was, he couldn't say that Eren had done the wrong thing. This was Mikasa after all, and it wasn't wrong that Eren had rescued her from a group of human traffickers. It was just the way the guy did it that was the problem. Who stabbed people to death when they were nine years old? And deep down in one of the darkest parts of Jean's mind, he was jealous. Jealous because he knew that he could never do anything or say anything to Mikasa to replace Eren in her mind. There was no way that he could compete with that. 

Armin, on the other hand, wasn't feeling what either Jean or the rest of his comrades were feeling. He was shocked like the rest of them were, that was a given, yet the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if he'd been able to, he would have done the same thing. Very few people realized that he and Eren were more alike than they seemed, and he would do anything for Mikasa, who he saw as a sister just as much as he saw Eren as a brother. 

For quite some time, they all sat there thinking, digesting what they'd learned about the two most mysterious, yet skilled of their group. 

...

"Hey, Jean, are you going to eat that soup?"


End file.
